Milk & Cake Press

Susana H. Case & Margo Taft Stever, editors, I Wanna Be Loved by You: Poems on Marilyn Monroe. This anthology of poems on Marilyn Monroe, one of the all-time greatest iconic figures of beauty and femininity, addresses questions about gender roles and their enactment, and the ways in which women attempt to negotiate the differences between their private and public personae. The ninety who are represented include Sylvia Plath, Sharon Olds, David Lehman, Denise Duhamel, Nin Andrews, Delmore Schwartz, Ernesto Cardenal, David Trinidad, and Frank Baez. The introduction is by Lois Banner, the founder of the women’s history movement and author of ten books, including Marilyn: The Passion and the Paradox (Bloomsbury, 2012). 

Susana H. Case is the author of eight books of poetry, most recently Dead Shark on the N Train (Broadstone Books, 2020) which won a Pinnacle Book Award for Best Poetry Book, a NYC Big Book Award Distinguished Favorite, and was a Finalist for the Eric Hoffer Book Award. She is also the author of five chapbooks. Her first collection, The Scottish Café (Slapering Hol Press) was re-released in a dual-language English-Polish version, Kawiarnia Szkocka (Opole University Press). Her poetry is also translated into Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese. Poems by Case have appeared in literary journals including CALYX, Catamaran, The Cortland Review, Portland Review, Rattle, RHINO, and upstreet. Case recently retired as Professor from the New York Institute of Technology in New York City where she taught for thirty-eight years. She is a co-editor of Slapering Hol Press. Her new book, THE DAMAGE DONE, is forthcoming fromBroadstone Books in 2022. For more information, please see: susanahcase.com/.

Margo Taft Stever’s latest of six poetry collections include Cracked Piano (CavanKerry Press, 2019) which was shortlisted and received honorable mention for 2021 the Eric Hoffer Award, and the chapbook, Ghost Moose (Kattywompus Press, 2019). Her poems have appeared in journals including Verse Daily, Prairie Schooner; Rattapallax, Connecticut Review; “poem-a-day” on poets.org, Academy of American Poets; Cincinnati Review; upstreet; Plume; West Branch, and Salamander. She is the founder of the Hudson Valley Writers Center and the founding and current co-editor of Slapering Hol Press. As 2021 Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Bioethics Department of the School of Medicine at Case Western Reserve University, she taught a poetry workshop on poetry and bioethics. She also teaches poetry at Children’s Village, a residential school for at-risk children and adolescents in Dobbs Ferry, New York. Her new book, THE END OF HORSES, is forthcoming from Broadstone Books in 2022. For more information, please see: margotaftstever.com. 

We are very happy to welcome these poets to the Milk & Cake community. Look for their books over the next year (August 2021-August 2022).

Joan Kwon Glass, If Rust Can Grow on the Moon

Joan Kwon Glass (B.A./M.A.T. Smith College) is author of poetry chapbooks How to Make Pancakes For a Dead Boy (Harbor Editions, 2022) and If Rust Can Grow on the Moon (Milk & Cake Press, 2022). She was a finalist for the 2021 Harbor Review’s Editor’s Prize, the 2021 Subnivean Award and the 2021 Lumiere Review Writing Contest. She serves as Poet Laureate (2021-2025) for the city of Milford, Connecticut, Poetry Co-Editor for West Trestle Review and Poetry Reader at Rogue Agent. Joan’s work explores trauma, grief, memory, motherhood, and recovery. She is a biracial Korean American who grew up in Michigan and South Korea, and she finds inspiration in the writings of Rachel McKibbens, Lucille Clifton, Eugenia Leigh, Margaret Atwood, Anne Sexton and Ellen Bass. Since 2018, her poems have been nominated four times for the Pushcart Prize.

Joan’s poems have recently been published or are upcoming in Diode, Kissing Dynamite, Rust & Moth, Rattle, SWWIM, Mom Egg Review, Lantern Review, Pirene’s Fountain, Honey Literary, Literary Mama, Barnstorm, South Florida Poetry Journal and many others. Her work has been featured on Frontier’s “exceptional poetry” for March, 2021, on the series “A Mighty Blaze,” “Poetry as it Ought to Be,” in “Every Day Poems” through T.S. Poetry Press and on “Wednesday Night Poetry,” the longest consecutive spoken word poetry broadcast in the United States.  Joan tweets @joanpglass.

Rebecca Griswold, The Attic Bedroom

Rebecca Griswold is an emerging poet and novelist out of Cincinnati, Ohio. Her debut collection of poems, The Attic Bedroom, is forthcoming with Milk & Cake Press. Her poems have appeared in Revolute, Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel, Connecticut River Review, Coalesce and Mock Turtle. Rebecca holds a BS from University of Cincinnati, and she owns and operates White Whale Tattoo alongside her husband.

Leah Claire Kaminski, Root

Leah Claire Kaminski is a poet, writer, and editor living in Chicago with her husband and son. She holds degrees in poetry from Harvard University and UC Irvine’s Programs in Writing. Recent work can be seen in Massachusetts Review, Prairie Schooner, Fence, Rhino, Vinyl Poetry & Prose, and ZYZZYVA. Grand Prize Winner of the Summer Literary Seminars’ Poetry & Fiction Contest, and of Matrix Magazine’s LitPop Awards, judged by Eileen Myles, Leah’s first chapbook, Peninsular Scar, was released from Dancing Girl Press in 2019.

Don Krieger, When Danger Is Past

Don Krieger is a biomedical researcher whose focus is the electric activity within the brain. He is author of the hybrid collection, “Discovery,” a 2020 Pushcart nominee, and  a 2020 Creative Nonfiction Foundation Science-as-Story Fellow. His work has appeared in American Journal of Nursing, Neurology, Seneca Review, The Asahi Shimbun, The Blue Nib, The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette,  and others, and has been translated into Farsi, Greek, Italian, German, and Turkish. 

Nicole Kurlich, Girls Are Figs

Nicole Kurlich is an Albion College graduate whose work has appeared in a handful of magazines including Poet Lore, the Hollins Critic, and Contrary Magazine. She lives and works in Chicago, Illinois. 

Marcus Whalbring, A Concert of Rivers

Marcus Whalbring lives in southern Indiana with his wife and children. He earned his MFA from Miami University and his work has appeared in The Cortland Review, Spry, The Oakland Review, Underwood Press and others.

Angelique Zobitz, Burn Down Your House

Angelique Zobitz (she/her/hers) is the author of the chapbook Love Letters to The Revolution from American Poetry Journal and the forthcoming chapbook Burn Down Your House from Milk & Cake Press. She is a 2020 Pushcart Prize nominee, 2021 and 2020 Best New Poets nominee, Spring 2019 Black River Chapbook Competition Finalist, and a five-time Best of the Net nominee. Her work appears in The Journal, Sugar House Review, Obsidian: Literature & Arts of the African Diaspora, Yemassee, The Adirondack Review and many others. She is a poetry editor of The Night Heron Barks and Ran Off with the Star Bassoon. Luna Luna Magazine named her one of ‘5 Poets of Color to watch in 2021′ alongside Chen Chen and Amanda Gorman. She can be found at www.angeliquezobitz.com and on Twitter and Instagram: @angeliquezobitz

Scattered Arils, Dena Rod’s first full-length poetry collection, titled after the colloquial name for pomegranate seeds, excavates familial memory and ancestral inheritance, and is now in stock. Click over to our store to check it out!

Joanna Thomas’ chapbook, blue•bird (bloo-burd), is now in stock! Each poem takes the form of a dictionary entry, and is built around the poetic constraint of the lipogram–none of the poems contains the letter “b,” except the title word. The resulting “definitions” are illusory, dreamlike, playful and sometimes funny. Check out this beautiful video of Joanna reading the title poem! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fp4CNZNFcpg

You can purchase blue•bird (bloo-burd) here.

We are pleased to announce two new Milk & Cake Press titles:

Marcus Whalbring’s A Concert of Rivers (forthcoming late summer or early fall 2021)

Angelique Zobitz’s chapbook Burn Your House Down (forthcoming late summer or early fall 2021)

Congratulations to Marcus and Angelique!

We are still open to submissions until 4/30/21–send us your work!